Forza Horizon 4 Demo Play
Denna Repaci
The open world has been beautifully crafted and everything from the smallest detail right up to the largest expanse of sky anyone has ever seen, will delight from the first moment to the last. With a great split between the hustle and bustle of city roads, beachcombing avenues and the wide open craggy outback, no matter what type of racing you want to get involved in, there is seemingly something for all. Rain and overcast weather is well realised too, and the demo has given a great insight into how the world will evolve as we are racing.
The cars that steal the show may currently be limited in numbers, but that is the very nature of a demo and what has been included is good enough for now. Each vehicle handles differently from the next and allows for hardcore racers, newcomers and arcade fans to get involved. The star car, the 2017 Lamborghini Centenario, is stunning and handles with a glorious arcade-like feel without it ever feeling too fake, and combined with the off-road delights of the Monster Energy Trophy Truck, kicks the action of brilliantly. The same goes for the other four cars that are on display and fans of BMW, Nissan, Ford and HSV will be excited to get behind the wheel of the very finest M4 Coupe, Silva Spec-R, Shelby GT350R and Limited Edition Gen-F GTS Maloo respectively.
Forza Horizon has not just delivered a superb single player experience over the years, but the online component, including the open-to-anything free roam that has seen players flock, has emerged to ensure that no other racing title comes close to beating it.
And so the chance to mess around online in the included demo free roam is just as appreciated. It could have all quite easily been restricted to a much smaller area, just a car or two and nothing more than a few single player events, but thankfully Turn10 have included enough content to show how much faith they have in their ability to deliver.
I'm not much of a car person, but even I can appreciate Forza Horizon 4's open-world ambitions. Set across a large chunk of Britain's twisting roads and scenic hedgerows, players explore and compete in events both static and scheduled in a wide variety of (mostly) expensive-looking cars. You can give it a spin today, as a free demo just popped up on the Microsoft Store.
While Forza Horizon may look quite serious in screenshots, it's a far more accessible game than it first appears. Positively unrealistic in some cases - developers Playground Games have been showcasing it recently with a Halo-themed crossover event. Even with more traditional driving controls, Halo's iconic Warthog off-roader is a slippery, bouncy thing. While most cars in the game won't be quite as geared towards massive floaty leaps over gaps, there's a range of off-road vehicles (and even some hovercraft) to drive as well as more sporty road and track models.
While I've not seen any Warthogs in the demo yet, the events available in this free taster are almost equally fanciful. It's not just racing - sometimes you're a stunt driver in an action movie, trying to land dramatic jumps while jet planes buzz you. The demo doesn't include online multiplayer, sadly, but gives you an impressively large chunk of land to explore and multiple events to drive in. There's a comprehensive photo mode, too. It's all absolutely stunning looking, although you'll need a beefy machine to do it justice.
The Forza Horizon 4 demo is available now on the Microsoft Store for Xbox One and Windows 10. The full game is out on October 2nd and can be found here. The base game will also be included in the Xbox Game Pass subscription along with the likes of Sea Of Thieves and State Of Decay 2.
The time has finally arrived! It's time to rip through the grassy hillsides and road-lined coast of Southern Europe in the second hipster music/car Horizon Festival. The Forza Horizon 2 demo just dropped a few hours ago, and I thought it might be cool to share some impressions of it here. Here are my initial thoughts.
In the grand scheme of things, it's pretty inconsequential, but I loved the way the first Horizon opened up and the sequel arrives in similar style. Pulling off of a ferry in an exotic and powerful Lamborghini Huracan into the tight city streets of a sunlit coastal city clearly inspired by the likes of Monaco and Naples, it's immediately clear that this game has a bit of a different flavor to its car filled environs. Obviously the next gen graphical fidelity bump is pretty jaw-dropping on its own, but the Southern Europe style comes across very well, and it makes the game immediately feel distinct from its predecessor as you drive your beastly new Lambo along cliffsides and through hilly vineyards to finally arrive at the Horizon festival grounds just in time for nightfall.
The first Horizon was debatably one of the best games of the last console generation, and I feel like this game carries on that pedigree very well. Car detail seems to be on par with what was in Forza 5 and looks great, but it's the environments that are where the game really shines.
What catches my attention more than anything though is the detail of it all. The city streets are filled with stuff - a line of bikes, a souvenir stand, benches - and the hillsides are packed with swaying flora and fauna that makes this feel a lot more lively than the mountains of Colorado. There's the occasional shadow flicker, messy texture, and minor pop-in here and there, but in general, everything looks great and the draw distances are amazing - even the typical open-world issue of cars popping in just ahead of you seems to be a thing of the past. Also, there was clearly some time spent on refining the tire smoke to please the drift enthusiasts.
This largely feels like the same arcade-tuned Forza from the previous game. The biggest effort seems to have been put in to improving the feel of different surfaces and making it actually fun and desirable to take the car off-road, and it seems to have really paid off. When the new dynamic weather system kicks in and wets the road, the car handling definitely feels looser, turns wider, and generally feels a bit more squirrelly. The off-road rally style events in Horizon weren't that great, but the feel in the dirt here inspires hope that it will be a bit better.
The biggest change in the physics though is clearly in making going off-road and bounding over hills super fun. The Cross Country event in the demo is a load of fun, and I'm really looking forward to doing more.
With this being a limited demo, it's hard to make judgements on the size/scope of the full game, but what's here definitely inspires hope in me that it will deliver something at least on par with the last game.
The two normal events in the demo, a cross country race and a circuit race, both felt really good and were moderately challenging to work your way to the front of the pack. The drivatar system has returned from Forza 5 though, so it will be interesting to see how things change once your horribly aggressive friends enter the fray.
The over the top challenge events have also made a return. The event in the demo has you racing against an aerial display team, and it's just as fun and crazy as anything I recall from the first game.
There are also "Horizon Bucket List" events which appear to have taken the place of the sponsor challenges. The one in the demo is initiated by finding a parked Koenigsegg and "driving it like you stole it" which essentially boils down to hitting a particular target on a speed camera.
The online mode also appears to have been further filled out (it was a bit light in the first Horizon), but there's not a ton here in the demo aside from a video teaser and a sampling of online free roam.
That intro video is easily my favourite thing of the demo. Already have my preorder in.
I really like the fact that they added in detail tuning into this horizon (which was missing from the first)
I'd also say that Horizon 2 is probably going to benefit from having a denser and more well designed world, and the new feel of off-road driving in Horizon 2 makes it feel pretty good even in the spaces between the paved surfaces. The Crew has a lot of mileage to cover, but much of it isn't anything all that special and if you get off of the asphalt in any car not tuned for off-road, it seems like you're in for a bad time.
@chaser324: Well having played the Crew and not having played Forza (I don't own an XB1 yet) I can clarify a few things. The physics feel more "realistic" than "arcadey" in a way. Cars have a lot of weight to them and you're not just popping the handbrake any time you feel like it to slide around 90 degree turns. Once you get used to it it's fine but I guess I wouldn't mind if it was a little more loose. Driving off road in a non-offroad car still feels cool. For the Beta I drove around in a muscle car and going offroad was cool. I can't compare city density since I haven't even seen Forza 2 in action much less played it, but cities weren't all that detailed in the Crew. When driving from place to place there are little mini games akin to the billboards you mentioned in Forza. You either hit a big ramp to go for range, smash targets, slalom between pylons and stuff of that variety. What is cool about them is that after completing each one you get a car part (which you can install on the spot) and experience with it - it's instant gratification.
So I guess we're just exchanging info about games we haven't played. I only bring this up because The Crew is a similar game to Forza that I'm interested in - open world racing - and since I don't own an XB1 it's the only one available to me.
I just played through the introduction, and holy shit the Horizon games have such a terrific sense of style. I'm not the biggest fan of racing games in general, but the original Horizon was the closest one has come to perfection since Gran Turismo 2, so I'm really eager to get my hands on the full version. If we're really lucky, maybe the rivals won't be completely insufferable and it actually will be a perfect game.
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